


And You've Got Time

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Aftermath of s02e09, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Lauraela in Prison, Non-Graphic Violence, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:57:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5544254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“She wants to laugh, suddenly. Orange never was her color.”</p><p>After it all falls apart, Laurel and Michaela meet again under vastly different circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And You've Got Time

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: 'Laurel and Michaela OITNB style, in prison.'
> 
> Disclaimer? I've never been to prison. The extent of my prison knowledge? Comes from Orange is the New Black and the Internet. Hopefully any inaccuracies can be excused.

 

The handcuffs on her wrists are cold.

Colder than Michaela had imagined they would be, and tight, digging into her wrists and making her wince with every jostle of the bus. The heater barely works. Every so often, the vent above her gives a pitiful little cough of hot air, doing nothing to combat the freezing New York winter. Her jumpsuit isn’t helping much either; it’s paper-thin, scratchy and rough on her skin, a hideous neon orange.

She wants to laugh, suddenly. Orange never was her color.

The bus comes to a screeching halt just then, and the guards line them up, escorting them into the building, which is made of bleak, weathered brick and surrounded on all sides by high barbed wire fences. Michaela hugs her arms to her body at the sight, and follows the rest of the inmates silently, raising her chin to keep the tears in her eyes from falling.

She can’t cry. She’ll be okay. _It’ll all be okay_ , Annalise had told her, when the cops had dragged them away that afternoon. Connor had struggled, yelled, so much that he’d probably gotten charged with resisting arrest too. Wes and Laurel had both gone in solemn silence. So had Asher and Annalise, while Bonnie and Frank had watched solemnly from the porch.

And she hadn’t struggled, but she’d cried, so pitifully that the female police officer had looked sorry for her and offered her a tissue. She made that mistake before, of letting others see her weak, _pity_ her. She won’t make it again – not here.

She’s Michaela Pratt. Michaela fucking Pratt. But… here, she’s not a name, not anymore. She’s just-

“Inmate 28903,” the guard’s voice breaks into her reverie, as he hands her a mesh bag with what looks like sheets, standard issue underwear, and a few other things. “Strip.”

The command catches her off guard, and she blinks, tensing up. “E-excuse me?”

“You heard me. Strip.”

“But I-” she shakes her head, flustered and glancing around the little, closet-sized room. “Where’s the female guard? In the state of New York, there’s a law that prohibits cross-gender strip searches, and I don’t think it’s-”

“You gonna make me ask you again?” he barks. “Strip. Pretty little thing like you? I’m sure you got experience with it.”

She opens her mouth to retort, then thinks better of it, closes it, and reluctantly tugs her sweater over her head, letting it fall to the floor. Off go her blouse and jeans and shoes and underwear – until she’s buck naked and her eyes are watering with humiliation, and she’s trying so, _so_ hard to be strong. The guard probes around in her mouth for a minute with a tongue depressor, before taking one long, lecherous look at her naked body and stepping back.

“Squat. Spread those cheeks and cough.”

“What?” she breathes. “What do you think – y-you think I’m… hiding something in my _vagina_?”

He shrugs, giving her a half-assed apologetic look. “You’d be surprised what some women can fit in their cooch, sweetheart.”

Michaela doesn’t protest again. She just squats, and coughs, and tries not to be sick when she thinks about what she’s been reduced to: a pathetic, sniveling girl, stark naked, her dignity in shambles while a creepy old perv gets a look at her naked body and her ass and her _everything_.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

She dresses after he’s satisfied, slipping on the pair of ill-fitting shoes and making her way out into a hallway, where another guard escorts her around the corner, into the heart of the prison.

It’s not what she’d expected. The halls are mostly empty, quiet, not rowdy. The walls are a suitably grim shade of grey. A few inmates wander about here and there, eyeing her like an animal in a zoo, an intriguing new plaything. One of them, a short, stocky woman with a shaved head and a neck tattoo, dares to approach and smack her on the ass, making some obscene comment about liking “that brown sugar” before being shooed away by the guard.

Michaela doesn’t dare say a word; she doesn’t trust herself to be able to speak without breaking down into a hyperventilating mess on the ground. By the time they make it to the dormitories, she’s on the brink of tears and choking down vomit.

This isn’t what she’d wanted. This can’t be her life now. This isn’t _living_. She doesn't even feel human here. She’s been herded like cattle, poked and prodded at and ordered around like a dog.

“You’re in bunk thirty-five,” the guard tells her, stopping just outside the doorway to one of the rooms and looking down at his clipboard. “You’ll be with – who? Castillo? Yeah, Castillo. Meet your new bunkie.”

 _Castillo_. They go by last names in prison, she’d forgotten. She’d known a girl by that name, what feels like a hundred years ago. The memory makes Michaela frown, but she steps inside nonetheless, not bothering to dwell on it.

The room is small, cramped, and windowless. There’s a faint stink in the air; body odor, she thinks, and two sets of bunk beds pressed up against the walls. One of them is full, occupied by two scowling white women who appraise the newcomer with hardened, suspicious eyes. The bottom bed in the other one is empty, and in the top bunk sits a girl with shoulder length brown hair, her back facing the door.

And then, at the sound of the guard’s announcement, she turns.

And blue-grey eyes meet Michaela’s, and she almost collapses in relief at the sight of a familiar face.

“Laurel.”

The other girl’s mouth drops open. She looks almost exactly the same as she had the last time Michaela had seen her, months ago when they’d been arrested; only now she’s bare-faced, without makeup, and clad in a baggy blue prison-issued uniform. That once-clever, cunning light in her eyes has dulled, a little.  

Laurel blinks for a moment, apparently struck speechless, before opening her mouth and breathing her name out in one stunned breath.

“Michaela?”

 

\--

_In the matter of Commonwealth v. Pratt, case number P0309486, we the jury find the defendant, Michaela Pratt, guilty on all charges._

All charges. There had been so many; she can’t remember them now. Tampering with evidence. Interference with a dead body. Obstruction of justice. Felony murder, in connection with the death of Sam Keating. Her lawyer had been good, but not good enough. Not an _Annalise_.

As soon as the guards announce lights out that evening, she curls up in her bunk, huddles underneath the blanket, and finally lets herself cry. She doesn’t know what else to do; all day she’s been like a dam about to burst, spilling water over its edges. So she cries, quietly at first, but growing increasingly louder as time passes, until her pillow is damp and she can hear her roommates grumbling on the other side of the room.

“Shut the fuck up, will ya?” one of them grunts. “Castillo! Calm your little girlfriend down.”

Above her, Michaela hears creaking. Then, clad in her long, grey nightgown, Laurel hops down off the top bunk, landing on her feet with a _plop_ and kneeling down at her side. Her hair is mussed, her eyes hazy with sleep, but full of empathy and pity regardless. Pity. Fucking _pity_. She hates that more than anything. No one _pities_ Michaela Pratt.

“Michaela,” she soothes, and reaches out to rub her arm. “Hey, don’t cry.”

“Leave me alone,” she hiccups, recoiling from her touch. “I’m not c-crying.”

Laurel sighs and takes a seat on the bed, angling herself towards her. “Yes, you are. And I don’t blame you. I spent my first night crying too.”

Michaela runs a quick mental calculation. Laurel had been sentenced before the rest of them; she’d taken a plea deal in November, which means she’s been here two months. _Two months_. Suddenly she has no clue how the other girl had made it even a _week_ in this place.

Michaela wipes at her cheeks, but still doesn’t face her and heaves another gut-wrenching sob. “I… I can’t be here. I can’t be here, I’m not supposed to be here.”

Laurel doesn’t say anything for a moment, just looks at her, before sighing again, slipping underneath the covers, and lying down next to her.

“Come here,” she urges, reaching out her arms, but once more Michaela smacks her away.

“No. Go _away_.”

“Look,” Laurel exhales sharply. “Our roommate Cindy’s got a toothbrush shiv, and I’m pretty sure she’ll use it on you if you don’t quiet down soon.”

That finally makes her stop crying, and she looks over at Laurel, horrified. “What – really?”

Laurel gives her a wry little grin. “No. I was just trying to get you to stop. But who knows? She could.”

“How the hell can you be making _jokes_ in here?” she sputters, her voice cracking as she rolls over finally to face Laurel. “This isn’t where we were supposed to end up, Laurel. W-we were supposed to be… _lawyers_ , have futures, careers, lives, and everything’s gone, it’s gone-”

“Yeah, it is,” Laurel tells her, apparently resigned to the fact. “We can’t be lawyers now. Technically a felony conviction won’t stop us from sitting for the bar, but… our reputations are ruined. We’re known as part of the pack of psycho-killer law students who cut up and burned Sam Keating’s body. So yes, it’s gone.”

Michaela manages a scoff. “And which part of that was supposed to make me feel better?”

“The part where you accept what’s happened. It’s just gonna be harder if you’re in denial. We’re in prison, Michaela. I’ll be in this place for four years. You’ll be here for-”

“Five.” _Five._ Oh God, five whole years. All that time – wasted. She'd gotten off easier on account of her youth and spotless criminal record, but that doesn't sound very easy at all.

“So the sooner you accept it…” Laurel drifts off, “the easier this will be. Trust me.”

With a lump still festering heavily in her throat, all Michaela can do is nod. She has a sudden, abrupt urge to be held, to feel the comforting warmth of someone’s arms around her – and yeah, she and Laurel were never really friends on the outside, but here, Laurel is all she has, the only lifeline of familiarity she can cling to in a sea of the unknown.

“Can I…?” she asks, drifting off and inching a bit closer to her.

Laurel nods and wraps an arm around her. “Of course.”

Still sniffling, Michaela rests her head on the other girl’s shoulder and snuggles in close, breathing in the smell of her starchy cotton nightgown. She cries quietly on her shoulder for a while longer, unable to make herself truly care what Laurel must think of her right now, before she calms herself down and takes a few deep breaths.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Michaela admits, her voice tiny, childlike.

“I’m glad you’re here too, actually.” Laurel looks down and gives her a smile. “I didn’t think it would be so… lonely in here, all the time. No one’s really your friend.”

Michaela doesn’t answer. She just lets the words hang in the air for a while, before shifting in Laurel’s embrace and gulping.

“I don’t want to have lesbian sex,” she admits out of nowhere. Laurel gives her an odd look, and she rushes to explain, “Everyone I talked to, everything I read, it all said you’re guaranteed to turn gay in here. I-I don’t want to do that.”

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Laurel laughs softly, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze. “You don’t have to have lesbian sex, all right? It’s not like that’s a rule in the prison handbook.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Michaela relaxes, closing her eyes and drifting in her own sense of misery for a while. Then, half-asleep as she is, she blurts out before she can think better of it:

“Will you stay?”

Laurel looks doubtful. “If the guards catch me in your bed, it won’t be pretty.”

“Oh,” is all Michaela says. She moves away, feeling stupid for asking and remembering, suddenly, where they are. “Yeah. I forgot. It’s… fine.”

“I’ll stay ‘til you’re asleep, all right?” Laurel volunteers, and rolls over, cozying up to her, close enough that Michaela can feel the gentle heat radiating from her body. “I won’t leave until then.”

Michaela nods and sniffs again, wiping her runny nose and settling her other hand over where Laurel’s rests on her hip; the only thing keeping her grounded, sane.

She realizes, right then as they lie there, that she’s not overly familiar with the concept of needing anyone – not really. She’d thought she’d needed Aiden, until she’d realized that all she really needed was to love herself. To take care of herself. To be strong.

She’s no longer sure she can do that on her own, in here. In here, suddenly, she has the sense that she just might need Laurel.  

It’s a while before she’s able to finally fall asleep that night, and in the early morning she wakes up alone, with cold sheets beside her, and only the memory of Laurel’s arms to keep her warm.

 

\--

 

It could be worse.

The Auburn Hills Women’s Correctional Facility is a minimum security prison in upstate New York; old, bug-infested, in disrepair, but livable. Laurel assures her that they could be somewhere much worse. It’s not intolerable, really: they have a yard for daily rec time, with a track and a basketball court. A common room, with a few televisions that constantly alternate between breaking and losing the signal. The cafeteria serves food Michaela doesn’t think is suitable even for animals: eggs that definitely do _not_ taste like real eggs, and meat of similarly dubious origins.

And, as it turns out, prison is its own little microcosm, with about a million new sets of rules.

On her first morning there, after ambling sleepily into the cafeteria and having a pile of unidentifiable brown slop dropped onto her tray, she glances around the room until she finds Laurel, seated by herself off at a table in the corner. In her naiveté, she goes right for her, and sets her tray down across from the other girl with a forced smile.

“Hey,” she greets.

Instead of greeting her back, however, Laurel blinks, and frowns. “What’re you doing?”

“Eating with you,” she says, frowning back. “Why?”

“You can’t, Michaela,” Laurel tells her, then nods to another table nearby. “You have to go eat with them.”

She follows her gaze, and finds it resting on a table full of black women. Caught off guard, she scoffs.

“Excuse me? What, are you saying we’re segregated?”

She nods, spooning some yogurt into her mouth. “Basically, yeah. If you eat with me, people will notice. And you don’t want anyone to notice you. They’ll take care of you over there.”

“Then… who do you eat with?”

“The whites, most days,” Laurel answers, shrugging. “The Latinas decided I wasn’t Latina enough for them. Now go. Before people start to notice.”

Feeling chastised and out of sorts, Michaela does as she says, and timidly sets down her tray at the other table instead. The women accept her with surprisingly open arms, though a few leer at her boobs for just a couple seconds too long, and remark that “well holy hell, no one told us we was gettin’ a young Naomi Campbell up in this joint. About damn time there was some eye candy.”

An older woman the others call Queenie – mid-fifties, at the oldest – takes notice of her when she sits down, and nudges her with her elbow. “You. What’s your name?”

“Michaela,” she answers, before realizing her error. “Um – I mean, Pratt.”

“Pratt. Well, not anymore,” the woman jokes. “Far as the rest of us is concerned, you’re Naomi Campbell now. The hell’s a nice-looking girl like you doin’ in here?”

Michaela hesitates, before picking up her fork and stabbing at her cold eggs. “I, uh, had some… bad luck.”

That earns her a laugh. “Haven’t we all?”

The rest of the women chime in agreement. Then, Queenie glances back at where she had been sitting, and raises a thick eyebrow.

“What were you doing sittin’ with that white girl over there?”

Michaela glances back at Laurel, who has been joined by another girl; a redhead, with frizzy hair and glasses, talking animatedly with her hands. Laurel looks like she’s mostly just tolerating her presence for the sake of not eating alone.

“I knew her,” she admits, after a moment. “Before I came here, I mean.”

“From the outside. Huh.” The woman gives an uninterested grunt, then narrows her eyes, talking as she chews, “You look like my daughter, y’know. Pretty like she was, last time I saw her. You ever need anything, you come find one of us. We take care of our own here.”

Another chorus of agreement breaks out, punctuated by a few “shitchyeah we do!” Michaela nods, not chancing a smile, but also not feeling the urge to cry for the briefest of seconds.

It’s not until rec time that she comes upon Laurel again. This time, the other girl is wandering around the perimeter of the yard alone, clad in an oversized beige coat, hooking her fingers in the fence every so often and staring out at the other side with a wistful expression on her face. She turns when she hears Michaela’s footsteps in the grass, and gives her a little distant smile, as if the other girl had disturbed her in the middle of a thought.

“Hey. What’re you doing?”

“Taking a walk,” Laurel answers. “I like being away from everyone, in the fresh air. It always smells like BO in there.”

Michaela can’t argue with that, and starts to stroll along at her side, not knowing what to say.

Laurel speaks up first. “Sorry about earlier. But sitting with me would’ve made people notice you, and trust me, the _last_ thing you want to be is noticed. Ever.”

“That girl you were eating with? Who was she?”

“Oh, Marge?” Laurel grins, as the cold wind blows a few strands of hair in her face. “We got here at the same time. She’s an… odd one. I think she wants in my pants, but she’s nice, otherwise.”

The other girl pauses, then takes a close look at Michaela, squinting in the bright sunlight. “How are you? Really?”

“It still feels surreal,” Michaela admits. “And I keep wanting to cry, like, all the time. I don’t know how to _stop_ wanting to cry, and… it just feels like I’m at some twisted sleepaway camp, and in a couple weeks I’ll be able to go home, but…”

She drifts off, choked up. Laurel lets the subject die with an understanding nod.

“I can finally think when I’m out here,” Laurel tells her suddenly, stopping in her tracks and peering out past the fence, into the thick, snowy woods surrounding the property. “I think about everyone on the outside. My mom, my dad. Frank.”

The name makes Michaela stop too, and glance sideways at her. “Does he visit?”

Laurel nods.

“Yeah. Once a week, and we’re still together, but… There’s no way it’s going to work out long-term,” Laurel tells her, picking at a few loose threads on her sleeve. “They say everyone visits all the time in the beginning. But eventually one day they stop coming, and they move on with their lives – and I don’t think he’ll wait four years for me. I don’t really blame him.”

“Caleb said he’d wait,” she pipes up, wanting to cry all over again at the memory of the last time she’d seen him. “He… promised he would. I think he will.”

Laurel gives her a pitying smile, as if saddened by her optimism. “I hope he does.”

They resume their walk silently, before Laurel looks over at her again. “Did you hear about Wes and Asher? They both got life. God – _life_. I-I don’t know how Wes will make it.”

“It’s Connor I’m worried about,” Michaela admits. “He’s not stable enough for prison. And… the things they’ll do to him, looking like he does, it’s…”

Laurel’s features wrinkle up in disgust, appearing genuinely sickened by the idea.

After she recovers, she pipes up again, “And Annalise? Do you know where they sent her?”

“No – and I don’t want to. She’s the whole reason we’re here, you know. If we’d never started working for her, and let her turn us all into her little brainwashed cult of murder children, none of this ever would’ve happened.”

Laurel shakes her head in disbelief, stopping again. “Michaela, we’re here because of what we did. We deserve this.”

“No we don’t!” Michaela hisses. “We don’t, and you know it. We’re not like the people in here. We’re not… _bad people_.”

Laurel folds her arms, incredulous. “We chopped up a corpse, burned it, and threw it in a dumpster. There’re women who are in here for less. Annalise didn’t make us do anything we didn’t want to do, and you know it.”

The brutal truth hits her like a slap in the face, and she almost flinches, before her shoulders droop and she feels like sobbing all over again. Her fingers go for the fence next to them, curling around the metal wires and staring out at the other side.

“I won’t make it five years in here,” she manages, her breathing picking up in what feels like a panic attack, hurtling its way toward her at full speed. “I won’t make it five _minutes_.”

“It’s not so bad, after a while. You get used to it, and, I mean, you have me. At least we have each other.”

Laurel’s lips perk up into the tiniest of smiles, and Michaela relaxes at the sight. In the distance, a voice comes over the crackly loudspeaker, ordering them back inside, but before she steps away, Laurel reaches out, takes her freezing cold hand, and gives it a wordless squeeze, her eyes lingering on the other girl’s for a few moments, with a look in them Michaela can’t quite place.

“Come on,” Laurel urges, and breaks away. “Let’s get back inside.”

 

\--

 

Her first shower is a harrowing experience, to say the least.

Since her commissary hasn’t come through yet, Laurel buys her a few things: shower shoes, shampoo, and shaving cream. She insists she can’t accept them, but Laurel just shakes her head and divulges that her commissary is chock-full of money from her parents, way more than she could ever use. Their other bunkmates snicker, and make some snide comments about Laurel being her sugar mama that she ignores.

Hugging the items and her towel to her chest, she makes her way into the bathrooms, watching the rest of the women cautiously and probably looking just as much the fish out of water as she feels. She makes her way inside without incident – until she reaches the shower block, and she hears a lone wolf-whistle behind her.

“Hey, mama, come over here,” one woman calls out, wriggling her eyebrows. “This your first shower here? I’ll pop your cherry _real_ good.”

Michaela doesn’t answer, but the comment flusters her so much that she fails to notice the other woman behind her when she starts backing away. They collide roughly, and her things go clattering to the floor, while the other woman – topless, with long tan legs and sharp features – gives an indignant cry.

“Watch where you’re going, bitch!” she sneers in a thick Hispanic accent, glowering at Michaela as she stoops down to pick up her shampoo.

“Sorry,” Michaela rushes to apologize. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there-”

She steps in Michaela’s way. “Well, ain’t that obvious?”

“Look, just let me go.” She tries not to let herself tremble. Michaela Pratt does not tremble. “And I’ll be out of your hair.”

“You’re the fresh meat, huh? Got a pretty face. You run into me again, it won’t be near as pretty when I’m done with it. We clear?”

Michaela is about to nod meekly when another voice stops her, in a tone that leads her to believe this woman’s unnecessary harassment must be a common occurrence.

“Cut it out, Valentina.”

Michaela turns, and finds Laurel approaching, shower caddy and towel in hand too. The woman scowls and turns her attention to her instead, folding her arms over her bare breasts.

“What? She your little girlfriend or somethin’?”

Laurel ignores that, surprisingly fearless in front of a woman who all but towers over her.

“She didn’t do anything to you. It was an accident. Just leave her alone.”

The rest of the idle chatter in the bathroom goes quiet. All imposing six feet of Valentina make their way over to Laurel, and for a moment Michaela thinks she’s going to reach out and slap her. But then the other woman just draws back, her lip curling up into another hideous sneer, as she pushes none-too-gently past Laurel and utters something in Spanish under her breath that Michaela doesn’t catch. All she hears for sure is a low, resentful ‘gringa,’ which Laurel apparently hears too, and prompts her to call out after her with an eye roll.

“Por última vez, no soy una gringa. ¡Puedo entender todo lo que estás diciendo!”

That earns her a middle finger as the woman struts away and disappears. Around them, the chatter resumes as the others go back to their business, and Laurel turns to Michaela.

“Sorry. Valentina gets off on terrorizing newbies. You okay?”

The pity in her eyes, the _caution_ , like she might break, like she’s some child that needs taking care of – it makes Michaela snap, out of nowhere. All the anger and sadness and fear, everything that she’s bottled up, comes rushing out at Laurel.  

“I’m fine,” she spits. “Stop asking, okay? Stop… acting so concerned. I-I don’t need you fighting my battles for me in here. Newsflash? I can take care of myself perfectly fine. I don’t _need_ you. For protection, or anything.”

Laurel blinks, clearly taken aback by the outburst. Hurt flickers in her eyes, and after a moment passes and Michaela realizes what she’s said, she regrets it immediately.

“I-” she starts, then cuts herself off, lowering her eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

Laurel just shakes her head, tensing up. “It’s fine. I’ll stop trying to help. And… I’ll be in the shower if you need me – which you just made it clear you don’t, so. Nevermind.”

With that, Laurel disappears around the corner, making her way into the shower block. Feeling guilty, Michaela follows, plodding her way across the grimy tile, into the shower adjacent to the one Laurel had chosen. She thinks about swallowing her pride and apologizing, but just keeps her mouth shut, strips off her clothes, and turns on the water. It’s cold at first, but warms into a pleasant stream eventually, calming her nerves, soothing her.

After a while, she finally chances a look sideways at Laurel. There’s only a half-wall separating them, and they still haven’t said a word to each other, but it’s clear Laurel is putting a lot of effort into ignoring her, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead as she lathers shampoo into her hair, which frames her face in soaked strands.

Her eyes creep lower then – by accident, almost, to her wet, gleaming breasts. Little drops of water bead on them, and on her neck, as she turns and tilts her head back to rinse out her hair. For a moment, Michaela just watches her like that, inexplicably mesmerized, as Laurel’s eyes fall shut, her lips parting slightly.

Her eyes open after a moment, however, and she notices Michaela staring immediately. Michaela’s go wide in shock, and she lowers them at once – because good God, she was just semi-accidentally ogling a very naked Laurel, and that very naked Laurel had caught her, and she’s not even a hundred percent _why_ she’d been doing it.

Humiliated, Michaela doesn’t say anything. She just hurriedly scrubs the rest of her body, then switches off the shower, dresses, and scurries out of the bathroom before Laurel has the chance to stop her.

 

\--

 

They don’t speak of the shower incident. Some things are better left unsaid, Michaela figures. Unacknowledged.

As her first month there comes to a close, she thinks she’s doing a pretty good job convincing herself she doesn’t need Laurel. They don’t talk as much, not since her outburst in the bathroom, and she’s fine. It’s every woman for herself in here anyway. Laurel hadn’t been her friend on the outside; there’s no reason it should be any different now.

Then, one day, Laurel disappears.

No one has any explanation. She simply isn’t at lunch in the afternoon, and doesn’t come back to their bunk at night. Michaela asks the women at her table at breakfast the next morning, but none of them know anything, and she spends most of the day freaking out, wondering what could’ve happened. She gets back to her room after her work detail in the laundry room in late afternoon before dinner, praying that she’ll be there, but finds that Laurel’s bunk is still worryingly empty.

Her face falls at the sight of the perfectly smoothed-down bedding, and her concern must be noticeable, because her other two roommates turn to look at her.

“Hey Pratt, you hear what happened to your girlfriend?” one of them pipes up.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” comes out of her mouth instinctively, before she can tell them _No_.

The words are a reflex now; the other inmates have been calling Laurel her girlfriend practically since she got here. It’s not like she likes Laurel. The shower incident was just that: an incident. It’d happened once. She has more important things to worry about anyway.

Namely? The fact that she’s fucking _incarcerated_.

“Whatever you say,” their other roommate Amy chimes in, her voice raspy from years of smoking. “Anyway, girl got sent to the SHU.”

Michaela freezes. “Solitary?”

“Possession of contraband, or somethin’.”

“But she wouldn’t…” Michaela breathes, swallowing heavily. “Sh-she wouldn’t have contraband.” _She’s too smart for that_ , she wants to add, but refrains.

“I don’t know nothin’ else. Just thought you might wanna know, on account of you two being lovebirds and all.”

Michaela doesn’t say anything else. She just goes through the motions of the day, until she makes her way into the cafeteria with everyone else for dinner. On a quest for information, Michaela glances around for a while, observing the guards staggered throughout the hall, before she zeroes in on one of them: a man, no more than fifty, wrinkled and bald, but not very intimidating.

He scowls at her when she approaches. “You need something, inmate?”

“Yes, actually,” she tells him, unflinching. “Uh, my friend. Castillo. Laurel Castillo. I-I heard she got sent to solitary. I was just wondering when she’d be out.”

“Can’t give you that information,” he snaps. “Now sit back down.”

Michaela frowns. “But, I’m just asking because I don’t think-”

“You deaf? Sit back down, inmate.”

 _Inmate_. She hates that word more than anything else in here. It strips her of her identity, makes her… nobody. She’s _not_ nobody. She’s never been nobody.

“My _name_ isn’t _inmate_ ,” she hisses and raises her chin defiantly. “It’s Michaela Pratt.”

“You’re out of line, _inmate_ ,” the man snarls, emphasizing the word. “Now either you sit back down, or you join your friend in the SHU for insubordination. Capiche?”

She seethes, but knows better than to protest again. With a scowl, she simply makes her way back over to the table, and returns to picking at her cold, lumpy mashed potatoes.

So another day passes. Then two. Then three, four, five, and still, no sign of her. By the fourteenth day, she’s sick with worry for Laurel. She’s never been to solitary herself, but she’s sure it’s no five-star hotel; based on what Queenie tells her, it sounds like hell on earth.

Fourteen days pass. Then, on the fifteenth, Laurel returns.

She’s lying in her bottom bunk idly flipping through a book when Laurel appears in the doorway of their room, accompanied by a guard and walking funny, like a newborn foal unaccustomed to using her legs.

Immediately, Michaela notices that something is off. It’s not just her hair, which is wild and tangled and probably hasn’t been washed in two weeks, or her rumpled uniform. It’s her eyes – they’re dead, empty. She’s not crying, but she looks stoic, so much like a statue. Resigned, too, like a broken horse.

Michaela closes her book at once. “Laurel?”

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even spare Michaela a glance as she walks over and hops up on her top bunk. Michaela springs to her feet and glances up at her, finding Laurel curled up in a fetal position under her blanket, her eyes locked ahead in a thousand-yard stare. She doesn’t look anything like the Laurel she’d been when she had first gotten here: strong, undaunted by it all.

“Laurel?” she says again, climbing up onto her bed too but approaching her cautiously. “Laurel, hey. Are you all right?”

No answer. Laurel looks up at her briefly, a brief flicker of recognition in her eyes, before tucking her chin down into her knees again. A moment passes in silence, and Michaela moves closer still, daring to place a hand on her arm.

“I didn’t do anything,” Laurel tells her finally, voice breaking for a moment but otherwise remaining steady. “Have any contraband. Valentina, from the showers… She must’ve got pissed when I stood up to her in front of everyone, and…”

Laurel drifts off, shaking her head, but Michaela understands. “She planted something in your bunk?”

Silently, the other girl nods, giving something like a low whimper that quickly transforms into a sob. Her face crumples. She hunches in on herself, retreating like a turtle into its shell.

“Hey, it’s all right,” Michaela soothes, reaching out and placing a hand on her cheek. “It’s okay. I’m here now.”

“God, it’s awful down there,” Laurel chokes out, sniffling. “A tiny room, and all you have is a toilet and a bed. And they always k-keep the lights on, and after a while, you don’t know what day it is anymore, or… if it’s daytime, or night. You feel like you’re going to go crazy. And I thought they were gonna… forget me down there, leave me there forever-”

Michaela urges her closer, pulling Laurel’s head down to her shoulder. 

“I didn’t forget you. I was so worried about you.”

Laurel doesn’t act as though she’s even heard, and gulps. “I act like I’m okay, all the time, y’know. I-I act like I know what I’m doing in here – but I don’t. I… I don’t know anything.”

Michaela pulls back slightly, and kisses the top of her head in an attempt to console her. She doesn’t know what else to do, or why she does it, but then she’s kissing her forehead too, and lowering her lips to her cheeks, kissing the tears off of them and murmuring comforting words as she sobs. The saltiness of her tears trickle onto her tongue, and it feels platonic and romantic, and so many things at once – and all Michaela knows is that it feels right. That Laurel’s here, now, and that she _does_ need her, like she needs the air in her lungs.

She’d felt like she was going crazy without her. Totally batshit insane.

“It’s all right. It’s all right. You’re out now. You’re gonna be fine,” she repeats the words like a mantra, rubbing her back. “I promise.”

“Okay,” Laurel murmurs, inhaling a shuddering breath and quieting down. “Yeah, okay.”

Michaela moves back just a little to look at her. With one hand still resting on her cheek, she uses the other to tuck a greasy strand of hair behind her ear. Laurel manages to give her a weak smile, and the tiniest bits of happiness and life comes back to her eyes. Michaela returns it, stroking one finger idly across her cheek.

She doesn’t waste any time contemplating kissing Laurel before she does it. Before she has the time to overthink it, she follows her gut, and leans in and places a gentle kiss on her lips, barely anything but a tender ghosting of her mouth across the other girl’s.

She doesn’t think it through. She doesn’t bother. She’s thought things through all her life, every day, and look where she’d ended up regardless.

It’s a… friendly kiss, if there’s such thing. Laurel apparently interprets it as such, and just smiles again when they pull apart, wiping at her damp cheeks. And when Laurel leans in and presses her forehead against the other girl’s, humming softly and wrapping her arms around her, for a second time Michaela can’t shake how right this feels. How _real_.

 

\--

 

Again, like the shower incident, they don’t mention the kiss.

Michaela considers, a few times, bringing it up – but that would be akin to admitting aloud that she likes Laurel, and she doesn’t. That’s ridiculous. She’s never liked girls, and there’s not much evidence that Laurel ever has either. She’d had brief thoughts in the past, short flickers of attraction to women, but she’d only thought it was natural to appreciate female beauty, the female form. They both have guys waiting for them on the outside anyway: Frank and Caleb, and Laurel loves Frank, and she really likes Caleb.

But he feels a million miles away from her, even when he visits. Distant. It’s not going to work, Michaela knows. It’s only a matter of time before it ends, and Laurel is here, and now. And Laurel is all she wants. All she can think about.

And – well, it definitely doesn’t help that half the prison already thinks they’re fucking and insists on calling Laurel her girlfriend.

“You know what I miss?” Laurel mentions absentmindedly during rec time one afternoon, as they sit side by side against one of the fences, watching a few other inmates play basketball.

Michaela looks over at her. “What?”

“Sex.”

Michaela blinks, flustered by hearing Laurel say the word aloud – when, admittedly, sex with Laurel is something that she’s wondered about recently, more than once.

“Oh. You mean, with Frank?”

“Yeah,” she says with a nod, twirling a dandelion between her fingers. “Or just, sex in general. That release. I feel like I’m going nuts in here without it.”

Michaela doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know what to say. A moment passes in silence like that, and then, Laurel glances sideways at her.

“What about you? Caleb ever give you that elusive orgasm?”

She reddens a little, lowering her eyes. “Uh, yeah. It was great. He’s really nice, and amazing, but it’s hard. Not being able to call him, or see him whenever I want. We don’t talk as much as we used to.”

Laurel nods, letting a comfortable silence settle over them once more as the cool April breeze rustles the trees.

“You know,” Laurel speaks up suddenly, her voice dreamy and distant, as if only half-conscious of what she’s saying, “every time Frank visits, he asks if I’ve gotten a prison wife yet. I think we have an unspoken agreement. Maybe… I should take advantage of that, one of these days.”

Again, Michaela says nothing. She doesn’t think she’s physically capable of speaking right then without making an idiot out of herself – because the thought of Laurel with anyone else in here hurts like a sucker punch right in the gut. After a moment, Laurel looks over at her again, gives her a smile, before turning her attention back to the flower in her hands and setting about plucking the yellow petals off it.

Michaela can’t help herself. With each one, she recites in her head, _She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not_. She waits with bated breath for Laurel to reach the last one, but she never does; she gets bored and gives up, dropping the dandelion onto the pavement and making it abundantly clear that, apparently, she’ll never know.

 _Dammit._ She’s never done the whole high school unrequited crush thing before. It sucks way more than she’d imagined.

 

\--

 

So.

Michaela has it bad. Really fucking bad.

She spends all day pining, like a schoolgirl. Every meal, wishing she could sit with Laurel instead, pining. Every hour on her work detail in the stuffy, cramped laundry room, pining. Every night, knowing Laurel is right above her, so close, pining. It’s getting pathetic, at this point. _She’s_ getting pathetic.

As an added, shitty bonus, people are starting to notice.  

She’s wandering past the visitation room one afternoon when she happens to peer into one of the windows and catch sight of Laurel there, sitting at one of the tables in the back corner across from Frank. She chats away, talking for a while, before Frank opens his mouth and says something that makes her smile.

It feels like someone is twisting a knife in her gut – or a shiv is technically more appropriate, she figures, considering her current circumstances. Michaela’s no stranger to jealousy. She’s spent what feels like her whole life coveting other people’s things, but seeing Laurel with Frank, with the guy she loves, smiling like she hasn’t seen her smile in weeks… It hurts. It _kills_. She wants those smiles for herself, greedy as it may sound.

“Falling for a straight girl blows, huh?”

A voice makes Michaela jump, and she turns, only to find Marge there, the petite, peculiar redhead Laurel eats lunch with on occasion. The girl adjusts her thick glasses and folds her arms. Michaela frowns at her.

“What?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb. You look at her all the time with those huge, puppy dog, I’m-so-in-love eyes. I don’t blame you. I mean, _look_ at her. She’s gorgeous.”

Michaela does look, in spite of herself. Looks at Laurel, beautiful and smiling and everything she wants. Looks at Frank, tall and bearded and handsome – and everything that _Laurel_ wants.

“If it’s any consolation,” Marge’s voice breaks into her reverie, “it probably won’t last. Never does. Guys can only go so long without sticking their dick in someone.”

That doesn’t do much to comfort Michaela. She only gives the girl a brief look, before shaking her head and disappearing down the hallway, not sparing Laurel or Frank a backward glance.

She spends the rest of the day feeling out of sorts and… she doesn’t know. Unsatisfied, is probably the best word, like she’s stagnant in this place, stuck in a rut, not moving forward – in terms of Laurel, and everything. Restless and in need of something to do, she paces around her room for a while, before gathering up her shower supplies, making her way out the door, and passing a returning Laurel in the hallway without so much as a smile.

It’s a crush. A pesky, stubborn, stupid crush, and that’s all it’ll ever be. It’s best if she just accepts that now, before this gets any more out of hand than it already has, and shuts her out. It’s self-preservation, keeping herself safe from getting hurt.

It’s pragmatic. It makes sense, regardless of what her stupid heart says.

She steps inside the bathroom, finding it surprisingly – but blessedly – empty, and heads directly for the showers, needing to wash the day away. It’s only then that she hears footsteps on the tile behind her, and turns to find Laurel there, without a towel or shampoo in hand, apparently having followed her inside from the hallway.

“Laurel,” she breathes, then clears her throat and shakes her head. “Hey. What’s up?”

Laurel shrugs. “I don’t know. You seemed pissed in the hallway, just now. Everything okay?”

 _No._ “Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Laurel takes a step towards her, suddenly serious. “I don’t know. Because of me.”

 “You?” she scoffs, feigning confusion. “I don’t know what you’re-”

“Look. I know, all right? I saw you looking at me, that time in the shower,” Laurel tells her steadily, unflappable as ever. “I see how you watch me, all the time. I’m not blind, Michaela. And when we kissed, after I got out of the SHU…”

Michaela swallows heavily, her heart drumming madly against her ribcage as Laurel draws closer still. She feels like she might pass out. She’s scared shitless, of both Laurel’s potential acceptance and her rejection of her feelings. Of what Laurel’s acceptance of her feelings would _mean._

“It’s…” she blurts out. “Okay, yeah. I do… kind of have feelings for you. It’s dumb, I know. You’re not… You aren’t _that_ way, and-”

“Who said I wasn’t?” she asks, licking her lips and stepping so close that her breasts almost brush Michaela’s. Her voice is airy, breathy, making her shiver. “It’s not dumb.”

She’s so close that Michaela can hardly breathe, so close that her eyes mesmerize, and her lips enchant, and her body makes her tingle. Without warning Laurel closes the gap between them, seizing Michaela’s lips with her own, in a deep kiss. Her lips are soft, entrancing, gentle; none of the rough tongue and teeth and spit of every guy she’s ever kissed, who seemed to view kissing as a kind of contest in which male dominance was king.

When Michaela finally pulls away, she’s breathless, her lips on fire every place where Laurel’s had touched. Laurel’s pupils are dialated with want, big black circles filling up blue irises, her rosy lips parted and damp with saliva – and kissable, _so_ kissable. She wants to kiss her again, that’s all she knows. Her mind has one track, one thought, and it’s Laurel. _Laurel, Laurel, Laurel_ , but-

“But what about…” Michaela pants. “W-what about Frank? You were just-”

“I ended it,” Laurel tells her, shaking her head. “He wasn’t happy, but, I mean, he wasn’t really a dick about it. And he asked me, before he left, kind of joking… if it was because I’d finally gotten a prison wife.”

Michaela gulps almost audibly. “And you told him…?”

“That maybe I had, maybe I hadn’t.”

For a moment Michaela is sure she intends to say more, but instead Laurel just moves in and kisses her again without a word. It grows heated quickly, with tongues and teeth colliding and hands tangling in soft strands of dark hair. It’s everything Michaela had imagined, everything she’d wondered about. She’s always been a demanding kisser herself, which others had sometimes found off-putting, but she and Laurel find a rhythm surprisingly quickly, and her taste, her smell, her _everything_ … It all draws Michaela in, stronger than the fucking pull of gravity.

Before she realizes what’s happening, Laurel is urging her backward towards the showers and pulling her shirt over her head. Their clothes and underwear disappear in what must be record time, flung carelessly on the floor. Without breaking their kiss, Laurel tugs Michaela inside, past the flimsy, torn shower curtain, and turns on the shower. A torrent of frigid water comes pouring out, raining down on them from above, and it shocks Michaela into a state of total awareness, heightening her senses, contrasting with the heat of Laurel’s mouth and making her body come alive.

And then all at once Laurel is moving her lips down her neck, to her collarbone, to the baby-smooth valley between her breasts. She lingers there to take a nipple into her mouth, suckling tenderly and running her hands up and down her sides. Laurel draws lower, lower by the second – until she’s kneeling, and urging her knees apart, and teasing her tongue around her already sopping folds in slow, languid circles, with an expertise that leads Michaela to believe she has _definitely_ done this kind of thing before.

Before she can go in for the kill, however, Michaela gathers herself long enough to say, “Wait. S-someone could… walk in-”

“So? Half of this place already thinks you’re my girlfriend,” Laurel chuckles, eyes twinkling as she leans in to taste her. “Let’s give them something to talk about.”

 

\--

 

Everything settles into a routine.

In time, as the months pass with Laurel, things almost start feeling normal, something Michaela had never dreamed she’d feel here. She ends it with Caleb, and they both agree it’s probably for the better. She tries to be upset, she really does – but she isn’t, not really, because having Laurel, touching Laurel… It’s paradise. All she’d ever dreamed she could want, and more. She doesn’t know what it makes her: lesbian, bisexual. Whatever it is – she doesn’t know.

She has Laurel, and she’s happy. Those two things she knows for sure.

They steal moments in broom closets, in the prison chapel between services, sometimes in their room if they can keep quiet enough. They’re far from the only women doing it; most of the time, the guards just turn a blind eye.

Everything settles into a routine – that is, until the day Annalise Keating turns up at Auburn Hills.

Michaela first spots her while walking back from the laundry room, when she stops in the hallway to observe the parade of transports, all clad in orange. All at once, like a demon she’d long thought exorcised, there is Annalise, all of her former pride apparently still intact, and her chin raised as high as it ever was on the outside. She’s too far away to say anything to her, but Annalise catches her eye in the crowd, appearing unsurprised to see her there.

Somehow, some way, she probably already knew they were here. She’s Annalise fucking Keating, after all.

Heart pounding, Michaela all but sprints back to her room, and finds Laurel there, listening to her radio with earbuds in on the bed. She clambers up onto the top bunk and rips her earbuds out, prompting Laurel to scowl.

“Hey, what was that for-”

Michaela only says two words. They’re the only two words she needs to say:

“It’s Annalise.”

 

\--

 

They decide to play the avoiding game.

Which, predictably, only lasts a day, before Annalise corners them in the yard, flanked by two tall, imposing women that look as if they could snap Michaela’s arms like twigs. Apparently, in under twenty-four hours, she has already recruited Frank-esque bodyguards.

But this _is_ Annalise they’re talking about, Michaela supposes. She really shouldn’t be surprised by the woman’s sway over people.

“What do you want?” Laurel demands first, straight-faced, as she folds her arms and meets Annalise’s eyes. “Why are you here?”

“Transferred,” is the terse answer Annalise gives them, in that authoritarian tone Michaela hates hearing again so, so much. “Don’t worry, I didn’t do this on purpose. It was random, due to overcrowding.”

“Fine,” Michaela hisses, stepping in front of Laurel. “I don’t care that you’re here. But I don’t want you anywhere near me – or her. You… you ruined our lives, do you know that? The whole reason we’re in here is because you blackmailed us into cleaning up Asher’s mess with Sinclair. It’s your fault our lives are _over_.”

Surprisingly enough, Annalise concedes, “You’re right. It is. That’s why I want to help you two.”

Michaela blinks. Her shoulders droop, and she relaxes for a moment – before she remembers that this is just another one of Annalise’s tactics of manipulation when she wants something, and hardens again.

She’s about to open her mouth when Laurel steps forward instead. “What do you mean… _help_?”

“I couldn’t protect you out there,” Annalise explains calmly. “That’s what I’d promised to do, after Sam died. Protect you – and I failed. After Sinclair, and Wes shooting me… we fell apart. Telling different stories to the police. Some of us were lying, some were telling the truth. It was a mess. I failed you all. I was supposed to be your teacher, your mentor, but I dragged you all into my mess. I want to make it right, now.”

She seems sincere enough, but Michaela knows better than to take anything Annalise says at face value. So she narrows her eyes, still not giving in.

“How? How can you possibly make it right? After everything that happened-”

“I know people here. That woman over there?” She points to a black woman across the yard. “Her name is Leah. I was her defense attorney, for a charge of murder against her when her boyfriend smothered her baby girl and pinned it on her. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep her out of here, but I got her sentence reduced by half. As you can imagine, she’s very grateful. And Angie here?”

This time, Annalise gestures to the tall woman on her right.

“I got the charges against her dropped for shooting and killing her abusive monster of a husband. She landed herself back in here for assault charges afterward, but…”

“I owe her,” the woman speaks up. “A hell of a lot.”

“So what?” Michaela scoffs, unimpressed. “You have clout in here? H-how is that supposed to help us?”

“I know the owner of a vendor who supplies food for the kitchens; I defended him too, when he was charged with embezzlement. I know a woman who works in the kitchen. A guard. Two – actually. It’s a small world, as it turns out.” She pauses. “I want to bring things in from the outside. No drugs – harmless things. Cosmetics. Cigarettes.”

Michaela exchanges a shocked look with Laurel, who steps forward again, eyeing her with disbelief.

“So you want us to help you run – what? A contraband business?”

Annalise doesn’t even blink. “I don’t intend to waste the next fifteen years of my life in this place doing nothing. Rotting away and getting old until all I’m good for is drooling. I want you two to work with me. I can protect you, this way. Give you all you’ll ever need in here and more.”

“All we’ll ever need? We’re fine in here, believe it or not. A-and do you really think,” Michaela hisses, “that we’re _stupid_ enough to get mixed up with you again? We made the mistake of working for you, once. Letting you convince us we would be better off, as part of your shining, elite, bullshit Keating Five. We’re not making it again. I’d like to get out of this place before I’m fifty, thank you very much.”

Having said all she needs to say, she grabs Laurel by the wrist and tugs her forward. Annalise motions for her guards to step aside, and they start to stalk away – but before they can get very far, the older woman calls out to stop them.

“You two remind me of Eve and myself, you know. When we were young.”

Michaela freezes, glancing sideways at Laurel, before shaking her head and turning.

“What do you mean?”

“Eve Rothlo. The lawyer on Nate’s case. I fell in love with her,” she says. “We were the same year at Harvard Law, like you two. Both intelligent. Ambitious.”

Laurel furrows her brow. “But… how did you know that we’re-”

“Miss Pratt stood in front of you to protect you. Instinctively. You kept touching her arm, trying to hold her back, keep her from putting herself in harm’s way.” Annalise pauses, taking a long look at the pair of them. “I know how lovers act when I see it.”

Michaela recovers quickly, and glowers. “ _Stay away_ from us. I mean it. Or I swear to God, I’ll-”

“What, Miss Pratt?” Annalise deadpans. “You’ll kill me?”

 _Yes_ , Michaela thinks, but doesn’t say it aloud. She just grabs Laurel’s wrist once more and leads her back inside, leaving Annalise Keating behind – where she well and truly belongs, as far as she’s concerned.

 

\--

 

“You know, for one, I’m happy that out of all of this mess, at least she got locked up too. She’s a sociopath.”

Laurel sighs and shifts in Michaela’s arms, trying to get comfortable on the lumpy mattress. “She can’t stand not being in charge of something, not having any power. She’s only gonna cause trouble around here.”

“As long as she doesn’t go near either of us, she can do whatever she wants,” Michaela mutters, and pulls Laurel closer, staring out into the darkness around them. “I don’t want anything to do with her. Ever again.”

Laurel hums softly and props herself up on one elbow, leaning in to kiss her. “Let’s not talk about Annalise anymore, okay? She doesn’t matter.”

“Hey, lovebirds,” one of their roommates calls out from the other bunk. “Cut it out with the pillow talk.”

“Sorry,” Laurel apologizes, then looks back to Michaela and grins, her lips hovering over the other girl’s. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

“Mmm,” Michaela whispers, relaxing back against the pillow and letting Laurel climb on top of her, open to some flattery to take her mind off of the day’s events. “Really? Tell me more.”

“Tell you?” Laurel breathes, hiking Michaela’s nightgown up over her hips. “I’d… rather show you more.”

Laurel slips a hand between her thighs, into her underwear, and brushes against the wetness forming there. She swirls it up to her clit for lubrication, and Michaela bites her tongue to keep from gasping. She loses herself in the sensation for a while, as Laurel works her clit back and forth and nibbles at her neck – but after a few minutes her mind starts wandering back to Annalise again before she can help it, and an idea comes to her.

“I have an idea,” Michaela announces, prompting Laurel to stop her ministrations and look up at her with playful eyes.

She chews on her bottom lip seductively. “What?”

“Not about that. About Annalise.”

Laurel rolls her eyes, then rolls off of her. “Seriously? Talk about a buzzkill.”

“What if we snitched?”

Laurel narrows her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we know her plan. We know what she’s going to do. We could get revenge. She’d get sent to max, for good, if the guards found out she was the ringleader of a contraband operation in here.”

“Michaela…” There’s an audible note of caution in Laurel’s voice.

“What? Don’t tell me you don’t want to get back at her too. After everything she did to us? Everything she _took_ from us? She said it started with what we did, but it was her and you know it,” she says, that old passion and fire returning to her after months of dormancy. “We could do it, Laurel. Take her down.”

“You have to learn to let it go,” Laurel sighs. “Forget about her.”

Michaela huffs, lying back and rubbing her lips together in contemplation. Laurel notices, and lays her head down on her pillowy breast, glancing up at her.

“Promise me you won’t do anything. She has connections in here.” Michaela just gives a noncommittal hum, and Laurel sighs. “Seriously. I’d go crazy if something happened to you.”

Michaela finally looks down at her and grins lazily. “Yeah?”

“Of course,” Laurel reiterates, and reaches over to lace her fingers through hers. “Sometimes I think that you, and this… It’s the only thing keeping me sane, these days.”

Michaela knows what she means. In a world where her name has been all but changed to _inmate_ , Laurel makes her feel human. Being with someone who understands what she’s going through and knows her pain is so freeing – even though she’s the exact opposite of _free_.  

Michaela rolls over onto her back, sighing happily. “What were the odds?”

“Of what?”

“That we’d both end up here, as bunkies,” she laughs softly. “I could’ve gotten sent anywhere else in the country.”

Laurel pecks her on the lips. “But they sent you here. To me.”

“You believe in fate?”

“No,” Laurel answers. “Or, before this, and us, not really. But now… maybe I do. Just a bit.”

Michaela drops down back to her bottom bunk before she can fall asleep in Laurel’s arms, and tucks herself under the covers while her mind churns, planning, scheming. She finally has a purpose, now. Something she can _do_. She doesn’t care if it’s rash, or stupid; she knows what she wants.

If there’s one thing she’s always known how to do, it’s get what she wants. And she wants to take down Annalise Keating.

 

\--

 

She lays in wait.

She doesn’t tell Laurel about her plan. Doesn’t tell anyone. She lets Annalise establish herself, recruit little worker bees, develop a sense of security, and start bringing in contraband through the kitchen. She tolerates her strutting around the prison like she owns the damn place, every bit the woman she was on the outside. She swallows her indignation, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Then, one day around Christmas, almost a year after her arrival, Michaela goes to one of the guards. That leads her to her counselor, who takes her to the assistant warden, who brings her to the warden. She tells the man everything: how Annalise is doing it, what she’s bringing in, who is involved. He looks satisfied, and assures her that her identity will be kept secret from all those involved.

It works just as planned. Within forty-eight hours, Annalise takes the walk of shame out the doors of the prison on her way to maximum security, with guards on all sides of her. Michaela watches from the distance, with a smug, triumphant grin. She’d forgotten how victory feels. How _exhilarating_ , how thrilling… It’s addictive. She’d used to feed off victory. She misses that, sometimes.

The one fact she forgets in the midst of her celebration? Snitches get stitches.

She brings the news to Laurel later when they’re in the bathroom, wrapped in towels after their showers. The whole prison is abuzz with gossip about the departure of “Queen Annalise,” as she’d come to be called, and Michaela pulls Laurel aside over by the showers, almost bouncing with excitement.

“I did it,” she whispers. “It was me.”

Laurel blinks. “What was you?”

“Annalise! I went to the warden. Told him everything. She’s gone. For good.”

“Michaela…” Her eyes widen, worry creasing her brow. “I-if people find out-”

“See, they won’t. The warden promised me anonymity.” She almost glows. “She got what was coming to her, all right? Don’t frown so much; you’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

Laurel looks like she wants to say something else, but lets her mouth fall shut and only finishes drying her hair, slipping her uniform back on. Michaela does the same, and they chat away happily for a while, until, out of her peripheral vision, she notices a group of women enter one of the doors and fan out across the room.

“Everybody out.”

A voice, deep and frightening, barks the order. Michaela knows that voice from somewhere, before. It sounds like-

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she turns, and finds one of Annalise’s goons appraising her and Laurel with cold eyes; the same woman who had been with her the day Annalise had cornered them in the yard. The rest of the inmates scatter like spooked rats, as the woman approaches Michaela, towering over her. Laurel tries to flee as well, but an equally large woman steps in her way, blocking her path to the door. They surround them like sharks, boxing them in, until it’s just her and Laurel trapped in the middle.

“We need to have a little talk,” the woman tells them, and cracks her knuckles. Michaela blanches at the sound.

“What…” she stammers, backing away. “W-what the hell is this?”

“You think you’d get away with ratting out Annalise?” one of them snaps. “This ain’t the fuckin’ playground. You tattle to the teacher here, you’re in a world of hurt. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that, little girl?”

“I-” Michaela blurts out, glancing back at Laurel, who is frozen in terror too. “I don’t know what you’re talking abo-”

“Annalise knew the guard you blabbered to, you dumb bitch. Kept him outta jail. He owed her. Like I owe her.” She gestures to the rest of the women around her. “Like we all owe her.”

“Did… um, sh-she send you?”

“No. We’re taking matters into our own hands.”

She’s in a state of panic, her thoughts flying in all directions. She can’t run; they’ve got her and Laurel boxed in on all sides. She can’t fight; she weighs about a third as much as most of these women, and she doesn’t think her self-defense classes from college will do her much good here.

So she does nothing. Says nothing. She just stands there, trembling, before the leader folds her arms.

“No last words? Good. I ain’t got time for that. Take her.”

Michaela flinches, waiting for the inevitable first blow – but it doesn’t come. No one even grabs her to hold her still.

They go for Laurel instead, and Michaela realizes, with horror, that she’s not the one they came for.

“No!” she growls, lunging forward, only for another woman to catch her arms and hold her back, as the others take hold of Laurel, who struggles and squirms but can’t break away either. “No, _no_! Let her go-”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she taunts. “Shirley, hold her tight. Make sure she watches.”

Michaela feels dizzy, her heart pounding, blood pumping noisily in her ears. Laurel continues to struggle and scream at them to let her go, and when one covers her mouth, she chomps down hard on her hand, prompting her to draw back with a roar of rage and backhand her across the face – so hard that her head jerks to one side. The sight only makes Michaela thrash about harder.

“Don’t!” she cries, choking out a sob. “ _Don’t fucking touch her_!”

Several of the women behind them advance toward Laurel. One draws something out of her pocket; a slock, Michaela realizes after a moment. She doesn’t see any shivs, or razor blades, but that doesn’t mean they’re not hidden away in pockets, concealed, ready to slit Laurel’s throat.   

“Wait!” Michaela begs. “Don’t. _Don’t_! D-do it to me.”

The leader spins around when she hears that. The rest of the group do the same, turning their attention away from the pale, sobbing, struggling Laurel.

Michaela swallows and raises her chin, masking her fear as best she can when she begins to speak.

“Do it to me,” she repeats, her words steady, measured. “Beat me. Stab me. Kill me. Do whatever you want to do – but don’t you _dare_ lay a hand on her.”

The leader pauses, as if pretending to think.

“Well,” she says finally, relenting and balling her hand into a fist, “if you insist.”

The first blow hits her square in the face. Something gives a sickening crack – her nose, probably, and blinding, white-hot pain follows. Michaela isn’t sure how many follow; they keep coming, over and over, quick in succession. Soon her face is wet and sticky with what must be blood; blood, everywhere, pouring out of her nose, her mouth. They throw her down, and she hits her head so hard on the tile floor that it almost makes her lose consciousness – but not quite. She’s still awake, enough to feel every relentless, savage blow and kick. In the distance, she can hear Laurel screaming, until finally one of the women places a hand over her mouth again to muffle her cries.

She doesn’t know how long it lasts, but that’s the last thing she hears before everything goes black: Laurel screaming, after they leave, release the two of them, and vanish from the bathroom. Screaming, and shaking her, and heaving hard, brutal sobs.

“Michaela! Michaela, stay with me _. Stay with me_! _Michaela_. Michaela, Michaela, God, n-no, no…”

 

\--

 

_“So can you tell us again, where you were the night of Sam Keating’s murder? You’ve lied to us once before, Miss Pratt. You’d best not do it again, and we’ll know if you do. Laurel Castillo, Connor Walsh, and Annalise Keating have already given us their signed confessions.”_

_“I… We were at the house. His house.”_

_“And who is we?”_

_“Me, Laurel, Connor, Wes, and Rebecca. I-I didn’t come there with them, though. I wasn’t a part of it-”_

_“And can you describe to us what happened that night?”_

_“The others were there to get information off Sam’s computer, proving he’d killed Lila. Stangard, I mean. But he caught Rebecca doing it, and chased Laurel, w-who was holding the flash drive with everything on it, and… he was going to attack her, push her, so I… I-I pushed him over the edge of the stairs. But! But it didn’t kill him. And after that, when Wes hit him with the trophy… I didn’t have anything to do with that, detective. I was just… in the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn’t do anything wrong. And with Sinclair, I shouldn’t have even been there, please-”_

_“I think we have all we need. Take her back to holding.”_

_“Wait! Wait, please, you can’t do this. I didn’t do anything wrong. It was just bad luck, a-a-a mistake. I didn’t_ do _anything!”_

“I didn’t… do anything, I shouldn’t even have been there, I don’t deserve this… _please_ , don’t…”

Her tongue feels heavy as she comes to, awkward, like her mouth is stuffed full of cotton. There’s a blinding white light above her, and a pounding in her head, and a pressure in her wrist; an IV probably, Michaela thinks, pumping her full of something that makes her thoughts foggy and unclear.

She squints, opening her eyes slowly. She’s in a room she doesn’t recognize, with white walls and a pastel painting near the doorway; far too nice to be the prison infirmary. She tries to sit up, but a shooting pain in her ribs stops her, and she looks down, only to find one of her wrists handcuffed to the bed.

If she could laugh right then, she would. Where the hell, exactly, do they think she’ll be able to go when she’s like this?

“You’re awake,” a voice comes from the corner, startling her. “Good.”

It’s a nurse. Her features are hard to make out with her blurry vision, but Michaela can tell that she’s middle-aged, her face riddled with disapproval – revulsion, even, at having to take care of an inmate.

An inmate. That’s who she is: a prisoner. That’s why she’s here. Annalise. The bathroom. The fight. Laurel. _Laurel._ Oh God, she has to go back, find Laurel. She’s probably worried sick.

“You’re lucky to have made it out of that scuffle alive,” the nurse keeps talking as she examines her IV. “Four broken ribs. A concussion. You lost a couple teeth, and suffered internal bleeding. They beat you half to death. But, you’ll be okay.”

She’ll be okay. _You’ll be okay_ , Annalise had told her, the day they were arrested, and she hadn’t believed it then, but now, she knows it’s true. She’s broken and battered and bruised – but she’s alive, and Laurel is waiting for her.

Laurel is waiting for her. It’s that thought and that thought alone that sustains her, as the days blur together in a drug-induced haze.

 

\--

 

Everyone stares at her in awe when she sets foot inside Auburn Hills again, like a woman back from the dead.

She may as well be. She’s been gone for two weeks; most of the inmates had probably assumed she was dead, but she isn’t. She’s completely, totally, very much _alive_. It’ll take more than a beating to kill her, anyway. If she’s going out, she’s going out in a much more spectacular fashion.

The inmates line up on the sides of the hall to watch as the guards escort her in, as if she’s a celebrity on the red carpet. They fall away in waves as she advances down the hallway, one by one – until they reach the end.

And there stands Laurel, at the other end of the hall, looking at her with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Ignoring the guards, Michaela rushes towards her, coiling her arms around her tightly and breathing in the smell of her hair as if she’ll forget it tomorrow. Tears come to the other girl’s eyes immediately, and when she speaks she speaks as if she’s seeing a mirage, or having the most beautiful dream, one too good to be real.

“Y-you’re here,” she breathes. “No one would tell me anything. If you were dead, or dying, or… in a coma. I was so scared-”

Michaela kisses her silent, just in time for the guard to catch up with her, take hold of her arm, and lead her in the direction of the dormitories again, with a command of, “No touching, ladies!”

Laurel follows, hot on her heels, and as soon as they’re back in their room, unsupervised, Laurel is all over her again, hugging her and pressing frantic kisses to her hair. She squeezes her so tight that it hurts her healing ribs, and Michaela winces, drawing back.

“Ow, not so tight. I have broken ribs.”

“Sorry,” Laurel laughs with a happy sob, burying her head in her shoulder again. “Right. Sorry.”

“Aw, doesn’t it warm your heart?” one of their roommates chimes in from her spot on the bed. “Two lovers reunited. ‘S like Titanic.”

“Ain’t like Titanic, dumbass,” their other one scoffs. “The lovers _die_ in Titanic. One of ‘em, anyway.”

“Yeah, well,” Michaela manages a watery laugh, kissing Laurel again. “There’re no boats around here.”

“And none of those women, either. Annalise’s goons,” Laurel tells her. “They got sent to max too. Most of them, anyway, after I identified them. But – _God_ , Michaela! How could you have done something so _stupid_?”

Laurel’s mild irritation is more adorable than anything else, and Michaela just laughs, softly enough not to hurt her ribs.

“Forgive me?” she asks, and Laurel rolls her eyes.

“You know, if I wasn’t so happy right now, I would be really mad at you.”

“Don’t be mad,” Michaela urges. “Don’t be mad at me. Please.”

Laurel scoffs, looping her arms around the back of her neck. “It was impulsive, and stupid. But… fine. I love you too much to be mad, anyway.”

The words don’t startle her in the least. _I love you._ No, they feel too right to make her afraid, or skittish; she isn’t the type to run away from commitment, anyway. All she does is smile and kiss Laurel again, murmuring them back across her lips.

“I love you too.”

They hold each other like that for a time in silence, before Laurel pulls back and looks at her face, reaching up to trace the row of stitches on the gash above her eyebrow, then moving it over to her still-black eye.

“It’ll heal,” she finally murmurs. “The eye. The cut will scar, but-”

“It’ll heal too,” Michaela repeats, giving her a tiny smile, hardly anything more than a brief upward quirking of her lips. “One day. That’s all I care about.”

It’ll heal. Maybe not tomorrow, or the next day, or even by next week – but one day. The promise of that is enough, Michaela decides, because right then Laurel stands on her tiptoes and kisses the cut sweetly, her lips like a Band-Aid, and that’s all she needs.

The promise of healing is enough. She’s no longer the impatient, ambitious girl who needs _right now_.

Now, she’s more than happy to take the promise of _eventually_.

 

\--

 

When Michaela Pratt is released from prison, she is thirty years old.

She has no job. No law degree. No wedding ring on her finger. No kids, no friends. Not much money.

But she has her freedom, the clothes on her back, and the girl pulling up in front of the prison in an old, clunky Honda Civic, who looks at her out the window with the biggest smile in the world, beaming bright and beautiful.  

“So,” she calls out, as Laurel stops the car and gets out. “This is the ‘sweet ride’ you’ve been bragging about?”

Laurel rolls her eyes and pulls her into a kiss. “Oh, be quiet. I’m surviving on a waitress’s salary here.”

The low, late autumn sun is warm on Michaela’s back when their lips meet, and Laurel reaches up to tangle a hand in her hair, the familiar feeling making her grin against her lips. They drink each other up with such fervor and need that by the end of the kiss, Michaela finally feels whole again, filled to the brim with everything she’s been missing this past year; the longest of her sentence, and of her life.

Laurel had gotten out before her, only to discover that her parents had disowned her, taken away her trust fund, and turned the rest of her family against her. Unable to return to Middleton or find work with her undergrad degree as a convicted felon, she’d gotten a job as a waitress at a diner in Philly, and saved up to rent an apartment while crashing on Frank’s couch – which, surprisingly, she said he hadn’t been an asshole about.

It’d been hard. Laurel would call her some days, crying and exhausted from working, and it’d killed Michaela to be stuck inside, unable to help her. It’d been hell, being apart from her, when she’d gotten so used to always having Laurel at her side. She’d missed her, so much. So, _so_ much.

But all that is over, now. The soft press of Laurel’s lips, and the gentle squeeze of her arms, are enough to remind her of that.  

Michaela pulls back then, and looks up at the blue sky, dotted here and there with puffy white clouds. She stares as if seeing them for the first time, eyes wide with childlike amazement.

“Wow.”

“Wow what?” Laurel asks, grinning from ear to ear.

“I… I forgot how it feels,” she remarks. “Freedom.”

“Well, I have a full tank of gas. We can go anywhere you want. So. Where to?”

 _Where to?_ Paris, Venice, California, Ohio, the next town over – hell, the next _street_ over; it’s all the same to her. It all means _freedom_. The world is wide open to her again, full of possibilities and promise.  

It’ll be hard, Michaela knows, far from the charmed life she’d led before. The two of them don’t have many prospects. They’re both ex-cons. She only has a few hundred dollars to her name, and Laurel’s job is dead-end and miserable, but they can make it work.

They always have, every time before.

So she just takes Laurel’s hand, gives it a squeeze, and looks out at the changing leaves around them, which tumble down from the trees when winter comes only to grow anew in the spring, with another life. A fresh start.

“Where to?” she echoes, meeting Laurel’s eyes with a happy sigh. “Oh, just… wherever you’re headed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://laurelcasfillo.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
